The Gaiman Spike

Much excitement already this week, with my review of The Sleeper and the Spindle being retweeted by none other than author Neil Gaiman himself, resulting in an overnight doubling of traffic on the review blog! My phone buzzed all night as the retweets from his fans came through. Heady stuff - check out the graph for site views over the last few days:

I'm really enjoying writing the reviews, they're a good way for me to keep track of the best literature we have in our collection, and am receiving positive feedback from a number of parents who've been reading along. Alongside my own reviews, we've also had a number of students add their recommendations, which is really cool. The interactive book review is still a work in progress, but is looking great - scroll to the bottom of the page to see what it looks like so far.

I met with the Grade 2 team today for a quick introduction to, and play with, Symbaloo (for shared resource curation - a big improvement on using Google sites, I'm predicting!) and Popplet. We'll be using Popplet for mapping narratives the children are reading and hopefully creating some Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I'm really looking forward to getting into the classrooms for that! 

Otherwise, it's my regular library sessions (the children are really enjoying Emily Gravett's books this week), and resourcing resourcing resourcing - lots of books to pull and sort for new units of inquiry, and shifting all the digital resources over to the new system is taking a bit of time.

Tomorrow's job: prepping a sample of the interactive CIS Self-Study Report for a meeting with the Director. I have a good plan of what it will be like in my head, and have begun to pull it all together, but will have to spend some time making sure all the links work, and the evidence is in the right folders. I'm pleased with how it's gone so far - the setup was thorough enough that the sub-committees were able to follow the tasks through pretty well, although, of course, there are a couple of tweaks I'd make to streamline the process for next time. Still, pretty proud of the way that my Co-coordinator and I have managed the process - more than 60 staff members across 12 sub-committees. Phew!

I'll leave you with our 'in progress' interactive book review. I know I ought to wait for the children to finish it off, but I only teach them every second week, which is too long to wait :). 

Blogging with ESL, Interactive book reviews, Symbaloo for resource curation...

It's been a busy week - lots of meetings and planning for projects underway.

The last while has been really enjoyable because there' s been lots of time for library work - I've really enjoyed getting more familiar with our collection, and gaining confidence in being able to find the right book for students, parents and teachers when they come and ask. However, we are just on the brink of the next phase of the CIS Self-Study, so I will need to devote a lot of time in the near future to collating the evidence and analysis collected by our sub-committees, and creating the report.

But, a quick review of the week, because there are some exciting things going on...

The Grade 3 ESL class I've been working with now have their blog up and running. Their ESL teacher is excited to have another way that the children can show their parents the work they've done so far this school year in her classes. Hopefully, it'll also provide a useful tool for reflection later in the year - they can watch the videos of themselves speaking and be proud of the progress they've made! My next goal for this group is to have them begin creating their own posts.

With this same group, we've been using Storybird to create narratives. There's lots that's great about Storybird - the illustrations are absolutely stunning, for one. It's really simple, available for computers and tablets, and it's relatively easy to share your finished product - via social media or by embedding. My only complaint is that there's no option to generate a direct link to your work - which means it's not so compatible with Blogger and other Google products. You can play with the embed code to make it work, but those are precious minutes better spent elsewhere, really. The other thing I'd really like to see included in Storybird is the option to add audio - this group of students has trouble getting their thoughts and ideas written down in English. My work-around for this time is to have them use Audioboom to record their stories, and we'll embed the audio underneath the Storybird work on the blog. I think next time we'll try Voicethread...

I worked with a couple of Grade 5 classes yesterday, which was wonderful. I know this group quite well, from being a Grade 4 classroom teacher last year.. I'm working with one group on creating interactive book reviews, using Thinglink. Here's the link so you can see what we've done so far, although it's clearly a work in progress. I love Thinglink - it's really fun, is a great vehicle for kids to learn to upload photos and video, hyperlink and manipulate basic code, and the end products look great. We'll add the finished product to the library's book review blog.

With the other class, we also published book reviews. They chose to publish theirs in Destiny Quest, our catalogue/library management system, so other students can easily access their reviews as they browse. We're just beginning to use Destiny Quest more effectively in the library this year, and so far, I like it a lot. It's very simple and user-friendly. Some students also chose to add their reviews to the library review blog to share with the wider school community, which made me very happy. Most of the reviews are written by me, about picture books, because 50% of my teaching time is spent with the very small children, sharing picture books. Which is lovely, but I'm very conscious of a vast body of excellent literature for older readers that I'm not getting into yet! It's a goal.. On the upside, reviews about children's books are more authentic when they're written by children, I suppose. Kids know better what they like than I do :).

I also had a really exciting meeting with the Grade 2 team, and am looking forward to trialling our new system for resource curation with them (Symbaloo). I have a load of curation to do with/for them for their next unit of inquiry, Resources and Choices. Also, more tech integration work with narratives, a couple of author visits, AND hopefully some drama.

Oh it feels so good to write all that down - so nice to be back in reflection mode - really keeps me on track and clears my head. Now for the weekend!

Information and Literature Resource Teacher

It's been quite a while since my last post!

This new school year has seen some big changes. I have a couple of new jobs - an admin/co-ordination/leadership role, but not to do with teaching, and the Best Job in the World. I do really enjoy the admin work, but it's not the stuff of interesting writing thus far. Fellow pen-pushers, you'll need to hold your hats for a mind-blowing post on the joys of developing and administrating systems for online collaboration another day. Sorry.

I've just begun a two year contract as my school's Information and Literature Resource Teacher, which I think is really just the knobbliest term someone could come up with for 'Library Teacher'. It's all the joys of Teacher Librarianism, without the cataloguing, ordering, book-mending and other sensible responsible library work. I am in charge of Literary Fun.

We started the year on an exciting note with an authors' visit from Chris Riddell, Paul Stewart and Anthony McGowan (coinciding with our annual visit from the excellent Brocklehursts of the Norfolk Children's Book Centre). I decided to try something new this year, asking our visitors to hold writing workshops with smaller groups, rather than the larger-scale book talks we've had in the past. My intent was that the smaller groupings, and more interactive format would be of greater benefit to the children, the vast majority of whom speak English as their second or third language. Anthony, Paul and Chris did wonderful work and it was a privilege to work with them and see them in action for a few days.

After that, time at the beginning of the school year was much spent in working on helping students learn their way around and how to find the books they need in the library. Using number lines to help the 3rd Graders understand the Dewey Decimal System was really effective, and we assessed the Grade Fours' skills by asking them to locate and pull books to keep in their classrooms for their Unit of Inquiry. Grade 5s spent a few lessons learning how to use the library catalogue, databases and kid-friendly search engines effectively. It's exciting to see them using keywords and filters to search, and it could well have happened that tears came to my eyes when I saw how many DO NOT automatically turn to Google Search when they want to find things out. Next stop, citation.

Working with the younger children (ELC, Grade Primary, Grade 1) has been a steep learning curve, but a rewarding one that deserves a post all of its own. I came into this position with very little Early Childhood experience and it's certainly a whole other world than the upper primary and middle school teaching I'm used to. Still, I'm very pleased with what I've learned so far - definitely challenging, but a very rewarding experience. And I have discovered a deep love for picture books.

My excellent librarian colleague and I have been tasked with making our library a more energetic and dynamic community space, which is an exciting process. Library traffic has definitely increased, with many more classes, teachers, parents and individual students using the space for a broader range of activities. This is an ongoing project, calling for lots of trialling of different ways of working together (and scheduling!), but we are learning together and many community members have commented on the 'friendlier' library atmosphere we've developed.

One thing I'm working on is increasing community awareness of the amazing literature resources we have, and how they connect to the concepts and values inherent in our school's mission and values, as well as those of the IB. Books We've Been Reading is a review blog for community members, that recommends high-quality literature available in our collection. I'm the author of the vast majority of posts, but you'll see that we have a few from guest student bloggers as well.

And I'll leave you with this wonderful illustration by Chris Riddell, that just arrived in the post for me this afternoon. Isn't she magnificent? Ah, the lucky lucky life of a library teacher!

Adventuress, by Chris Riddell.

Minecraft for Sustainability: Part 2

In my last post, I outlined how we set up to use Minecraft for learning in our inquiry into sustainability. Here's what came next..

After beginning the research and laying the foundations for understanding what sustainability is, what the systems for sustainable communities are, and how they work, the students began actually playing Minecraft.

Because he was the one with the Minecraft knowhow, Ben the Digital Integrator led the first setup lesson: leading the students in developing our Essential Agreement, allocating 'hosts' and talking the children through the process of setting up and joining Minecraft worlds.

Most children in the class already knew how to play Minecraft, which was brilliant - those who didn't have as much as much experience with the game soon caught up with expert tutelage from their peers. So much more effective than chalk and talk. I did my best to become a 'spy' - I snuck around the room, listened to their conversations, asked questions, recorded some 'thinking points' and gathered evidence.

We trapped chickens so we didn't have to kill them to get eggs. If you breed them you can kill the old ones to eat meat. #edtech #Minecraft
— fourlk (@fourlk) June 6, 2014

My small house doesn't use too much energy to heat or cool. Torches make light AND heat the house. #edtech #ipaded pic.twitter.com/gy89HPZA7Y
— fourlk (@fourlk) June 6, 2014

The hardest bits:

• coming to terms with the amount of playing time needed in order to make connections with the concept - sustainability. This actually makes sense - you need time for your community to develop in order to see if the decisions you've made are sustainable. It's pretty clear that this is part of the ongoing struggle with the shifting locus of control - it is always difficult to let go of the feeling that I must always be the 'director' of the learning that's happening in the classroom.
• related to the above - balancing screen time. The children needed enough time to be able to work on their worlds, but not so much that the amount of screen time was going to be detrimental. I cut back as much as possible on the use of iPads and laptops for other tasks during this time, keeping in mind that much of the students' Home Learning work was web- and app-based.

Things I learned/ was reminded of:

• children need time to work through and develop their understandings on their own. Give them plenty of thinking and working time before you start looking for evidence of their learning.
• I can learn so much from my students! Minecraft worlds are very similar AND have significant differences to the real world. Discussions we had about the similarities and differences between sustainability in the real and virtual worlds were fantastic. Despite some kids very honestly telling me that they 'were just playing Minecraft', there weren't any children who were unable to make connections between their Minecraft worlds and the research they'd already done.

The very best part:

• One of my students (a poster child for inquiry!) came to me one day and asked 'Miss Kemp, is it ok if we make our own sustainable worlds to work on at home?' When I asked her what she meant, the little girl explained 'Well, I really like what we're doing in our group, but I have some ideas that the others don't want to use. Is it ok if I try those ideas out in my own world at home?' She then came to chat to me every few days to talk about how her 'other world' was progressing, the things that had worked, and the things that hadn't. She explained her thinking, comparing her 'own' world to the one she was working on with her peers in class and made clear connections to the research we'd done at the beginning of the unit. She was so motivated and it was so exciting to see her actively researching her ideas and theories on her own, for herself.

I really enjoyed using Minecraft for this unit of inquiry. I think it has great potential as a learning tool. I am really glad that I kept a very close eye on what the children were doing at each stage - restricting playing time for the unit to 'in-class' kept a tight lid on misuse and disgreements between group members. More importantly, it made the whole process a lot more transparent - it was really easy for me to track developments in each of the groups' worlds and see the learning that was happening.

I discovered in my end of year survey that a couple of parents were concerned because their children had been creating new worlds to play Minecraft at home. I was a little bit worried about it, because I had really tried to ensure that parents had plenty of information about the use of technology in our class, and, more importantly, that they felt able to address these concerns with me directly. While I created a space on the Parent Information site for information about our iPad trial, and as a class we regularly sent out tweets and wrote blog posts about what we were doing, I'm not sure how many parents followed or found this information. Perhaps half of parents came to parent information sessions and it is impossible to tell how many read emails, website information, blog posts or tweets. One thing I would like to work more on is developing a 'team' approach to teaching children about Digital Citizenship - working with parents to ensure that children are using technology safely and sensibly. Developing partnerships with parents has been on my mind a lot this year - I think it is so incredibly important, given the rapid rate at which learning is changing: clearly fruit for a future post!

Minecraft for Sustainability Part One: Setting Up

I am so excited to finally be able to write that this is happening. We are using Minecraft for learning! Gamers!

In this unit of inquiry, the children's inquiries are into systems for sustainable communities. I really loved the PBL we did for Maths, but am loving this one even more - I feel like we are using a greater and more balanced variety of tools to work through the inquiry process.

A quick outline to map out where we've been and where we're going:
We spent the first couple of weeks tuning in to the concept of sustainability - reading related literature, linking to the folk tale of the Tortoise and the Hare and then to the concept of stamina, which they were familiar with from PE class. We spent 4 days on camp in the Seewinkel National Park, learning about national parks, organic farming and living, as well as studying local flora and fauna. It was really important to me that we didn't just dive straight in to gloom and doom and 'You must do this or the world will end!', and that the children were given plenty of opportunities to enjoy nature and develop their sense of wonder for the world.

On returning to school, I introduced the PBL task: use Minecraft to collaboratively develop a sustainable community. But we didn't dive straight in.

In preassessing the children, I found that many of them didn't have much prior knowledge about the systems we use to get energy, food, water, process waste, etc etc. And so my first priority was to ensure that they developed knowledge and understanding of the different systems that communities rely on to get the things they need.

In a brainstorming session, the children identified some systems that communities need. Initially, they identified the need for systems to get food, water and energy, building and planning homes and cities and getting materials for building. It proved to be really helpful to think back to the systems in place at the WWF base at Seewinkelhof, and to extrapolate from there to 'the real world'.

The children broke up into groups and chose a research focus to further develop their background knowledge for sharing later with other groups, jigsaw style. To scaffold for these beginning researchers, I created a text set with relevant articles and videos (differentiated, of course!) that they are able to access via Flipboard on their tablets at school and home. We also have a trolley with a variety of related books from the library, that we share with the other Grade 4 classes. While the children were researching, I spent time conferencing with each group, recording related questions and slowly guiding them from the 'How do we get water/energy?' kinds of questions to the 'What are the most sustainable ways to get water/energy?' kinds of questions.

I decided that the best way for the children to record and share their thinking and research was with paper and pencil, and so each group worked to create brainstorm-style charts to show their thinking and the information that they found. These brainstorms are displayed on the bulletin board at the back of the class for ease of sharing. The children are also able to refer back to this information during Minecraft sessions and other related activities in class. Here are some pictures to show what we've done so far.

I thought about making this process entirely digital, but I'm finding that it's really important to have some things in tangible as well as digital form. We can photograph or use Thinglink to publish this information online later, if needed.

Things I really liked about this part of the inquiry: students really engaged with the content - I saw a marked increase in knowledge and understanding of the concept and related information. I am also pleased that I spent time putting together a text set with Flipboard - the children spent a lot less time surfing the internet and a lot more time engaging with relevant texts at their own level. Also, the wide range of resources available for research (books, videos, online articles) and the role of iPads in the research process led to a much more engaged group of students overall, meaning less of my teaching time was spent on behaviour management and more on helping students to work through their inquiries. Win!

After this (ongoing) jigsaw was up and running, we began playing Minecraft. I have a lot to think and write about, so will end this post here and devote Part II entirely to the Minecraft component.

iPads in the Wilderness

I am writing this from camp - our current unit of inquiry is about 'Sharing the Planet', and we have four days here at Seewinkel National Park to take a closer look and learn about wetlands wildlife, as well as the local approach to sustainability. It's an excellent camp - we cycle, observe how the stork population lives in the wetlands and nests on the chimney tops in local towns, meet with a local organic farmer to discuss sustainable farming practices, peer at insects and water plants through microscopes and go for night walks in the forest.

It really is a great way for these city kids (and their teachers!) to have the opportunity to connect with nature and to get to know another part of Austria. So you can imagine that there was some concern when I suggested we bring our iPads along with us. Questions, comments and concerns included: 'It's not fair for the other kids who don't have iPads', 'Won't they just stay up all night playing Minecraft?', 'It's completely against the philosophy of the camp - it's supposed to be about unplugging' and 'Why?'.

The first two comments were management issues and easily dealt with: children would work in teams and share the tablets with team members; and the iPads would stay with a teacher at night time, and any other time not designated for learning time. These rules were made very clear to children, and reflect the rules we already have in place for class. The answers to the remaining two issues are much more interesting.

My first argument for bringing the iPads with us on camp was this: I believe that students benefit most from the use of 1:1 technology when it breaches the walls of the classroom. During the 'regular' class week, the children take their iPads home with them to continue their inquiries outside of school hours, with good results. In addition, I'm in the midst of an action research project, and bringing the iPads with us is providing us with more data. Basically, how would the benefits of iPad use in class and at home transfer to iPad use on camp?

Second, I'm not sure that I agree that this camp actually is about unplugging. It's about sustainability and developing a sense of wonder for our amazing world. My belief is that sustainability is not about abstention so much as it is about balance and building sustainable systems. My vision for iPads on camp was that the children would carry their iPads with them throughout the day, recording their observations on film, in photos and in notes for reflection later in class. With a wifi connection in the evenings, they could do research and find answers to questions developed in the field. Just another tool, along with binoculars and microscopes, to explore the national park.

One thing that has been important to me throughout this trial is that the children come to understand that the iPads are one of many tools that they may choose to use for their learning. Of course, there are some times when we are learning about a new app or skill and all children will be asked to get their iPads out. But as they become more and more proficient at using the iPads for a range of tasks, my expectation is that they are the ones who decide when the iPad is the best tool to use. Of course, it's a popular tool, but more and more, children are thinking carefully about what they're doing and will choose the tool according to its appropriateness, rather than for the coolness factor.

So on camp the message to students has been 'Your iPad is here. If you would like to take it out in the field today, pop it in your rucksack. If you'd prefer to leave it behind and use the camp booklet, go for it.' On the first day in the field, about half the children took their iPads with them. On the second, all the iPads stayed locked away in our guesthouse. And the third.

This is really fascinating to me. I'm really not sure why the children have been ditching their iPads - I'll have to interview them when we get back to Vienna. Here are a couple of guesses:

1. The responsibility of carrying the iPads around in an unfamiliar place weighs too heavily on the children. I know that many kids are worried they'll lose their iPad out in the national park and the weather has been rainy as well. Nobody wants a soggy tablet.
2. There are too many other things to do - the children are playing games, running around, exploring, working with experts in the field and socialising. There's just no time for iPads as well.
3. The children weren't sure how to use their iPads in the field, and needed more scaffolding and/or modelling. Hindsight being 20/20, we ought to have had a few practice runs using tablets in some 'camp-like' contexts. This is definitely one to talk through with the Digital Learning Integrator.

Let's see what the children have to say about it next week...

If I was Queen of the Universe...

In my last post, I wrote about the need for culture of creativity throughout a school's community, not just within classrooms. It was bothering me, and I hoped that writing about it would get it out of my system. It didn't - I'm stuck on the idea of developing schools as creative communities, as opposed to institutions that inspire kids to be creative. I want an action plan.

A quick definition to explain what I mean by 'schools as creative communities' and 'schools as institutions'. A creative community is composed of students, teachers, non-teaching staff, parents and other stakeholders who are inspired and inspiring. The institution is an hierarchical organisation with the purpose of spitting out creative kids.

My big question: How can we develop schools that are creative communities in which all members inspire and are inspired? More practically - what can I do?

To inspire kids to think outside of the box, I need to be an out of the box thinker myself. I need to be inspired.
So what inspires me?
My list:
An inspirational environment - aesthetics, culture, people, resources. Collaboration. Playfulness. Flexibility. Energy. Connection. Communication. Empowerment. Feedback. Risk Taking. Boldness. Openness. Encouragement and Opportunities to lead. Reflection.

And what kills my inspiration?
Rigidity. Canned curricula. Timidity. Hidden agendas and resource-hoarding. Fear of failure. Bullying.

What do I already do about all this? What more can I do?
Concerning my own day-to-day practice, I have a fair amount of freedom. So in that sphere, it's pretty straightforward.

• share things that inspire me with my students, colleagues and their families, and inspire them to share with others
• be bold
• use a variety of technologies for learning, teaching, connecting
• collaborate - within my school's community and beyond
• invite community members in, in a variety of formal and informal contexts
• engage in open dialogue with students, colleagues, parents, other community members
• create inspirational spaces, and space for inspiration
• be positive, encouraging, give things a go
• invite a variety of outcomes when trying something new 
• persevere!

Ok, so now for the Queen of the Universe part.
Somewhere in my travels around the internet, I found this sentence and wrote it down to think about.
'The School provides the freedom for our teachers to be creative and bold in their practice, to collaborate with colleagues and to challenge themselves to try new methodologies.'
I really like it. Really. Especially 'bold'. We definitely need to be bold.
But.
Is it enough just to 'provide the freedom'?

I think that, to be inspirational, 'providing freedom' is the bare minimum any organisation can do. Here are a few ideas for scaffolding inspiration.

• redesign spaces for learning and community activities
• provide a variety of opportunities and media for community participation
• develop an inclusive and inspirational culture
• de-institutionalise - is it necessary for children to always walk in straight lines, call their teacher 'Mr' or 'Ms', have regular meeting times, do it because that's how it's always been done?
• designate time and space for community members (not just teachers and students!) to share things they've been doing, things that have inspired them
• designate time and space for collaboration with community members
• develop a culture of participation for all community members - everyone is responsible for creating an inspiring and inspirational community